Authorship, ownership, and plagiarism in the digital age

Abstract

This chapter examines the close relationship between what constitutes authorship and originality as these concepts are used as a foundation for views of plagiarism. It is important to revisit our beliefs about what makes up authorial rights because digital technologies contest the very core of what it means to have authorship rights over text. Authorship and originality also underpin the birth, and continued life, of plagiarism in policy and practice. Drawing on the nexus between legal and literary theories of authorship across four global spheres— England, Europe, the United States, and the UN — this chapter examines how plagiarism has come to be realized both in terms of authorial rights and how this has framed plagiarism as represented in university plagiarism policies. The tension between the Romantic notion of authorship (which has evolved through legal theory and the Law) and literary intertextuality, which challenges the idea of “owning words“ is evident in the debate over plagiarism being framed as academic misconduct or academic integrity. This chapter outlines that debate Substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them.